Spec Miatas racing at Road Atlanta
Like so much of life, driving fast on the racetrack is mostly in your head: focusing your senses to pick up maximum information while shutting up the unhelpful inner voices so you can respond to the ever changing environment. Yes, lots of people get caught up in the physical/technical aspects of going fast. Without a doubt, your 650 horsepower Corvette Z-06 can outrun my tired old 100 hp on a good day Miata. But that’s not the part of high performance driving that fascinates me and keeps me wanting more. No, it’s the inner game—what makes one driver faster than another in an identically equipped car? And the differences are dramatic! At a race last November at Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP), the range of best lap times for the Spec Miata class was 1:52:063 to 2:04:336. That’s more than 12 seconds—an 11% difference! “Spec” stands for specified. The modifications allowed to these cars are very limited in order to make the cars as close to identical as possible. Variations in lap time are almost entirely due to the driver, not the car.
I always counsel my high performance driver education students—before you start tweaking your car, do all you can with the driver. And, when you think you’ve improved as much as you can, have the best driver you know take your car out for a few laps on the racetrack. How do that driver’s lap times compare to yours? So what needs a push—the driver or the car? It’s about skills we can learn and experience we can acquire.
I miss the track. I miss driving and teaching. And I won’t be headed back to the track any time soon. I’m able to continue to limit my social contact without economic or emotional fallout and I intend to. But I do daydream about it and am reminded—the inner game is much the same, whether we’re driving fast on a race track or navigating our lives through corona virus chaos.
Where are your eyes?
The most important thing I’ve learned from driving on the race track is to always keep your eyes looking farther forward. In driving and life, it’s tempting to focus on what is going on right around us. You know, that financial pornography (a very fitting description coined by Carl Richards, the Sketch Guy) that crosses your screen 24/7. Or, when driving, whatever is immediately in front of your hood. We get caught up. But all we’re doing is reacting to stuff that has already happened—what’s around us now. In so doing, we miss the opportunity to focus our attention on the future where our current actions can make a difference in determining our path.
Sometimes, in life and on the track, if we lift our eyes, what’s coming seems very clear. I might be headed down a straight with a clear view of the next turn and any traffic or debris between here and there. This is reminiscent of how life felt before COVID-19—kinda predictable. It wasn’t true, but it had that feel to it. And, of course, it turned out that it wasn’t predictable at all.
But We Can’t See What’s Coming…
Spec Miatas at Carolina Motorsports Park
One of the most difficult and important corners at CMP is turn 14. It’s at the end of a short straight. It’s a 75 degree turn leading on to the nice, long, front straight. If you don’t do it well, you’re likely to hit the tooth-jarring rough rumble strips on the outside of the turn. And, if you really blow it, you’ll go right over those rumble strips into a sand trap, hopefully still shiny side up. Turn 14 and the front straight are prime spectator country. The straight borders the paddock where all of your track buddies are congregating, waiting for their next track session. Screw ups in turn 14 are a great source of entertainment for spectators and fellow drivers alike.
Turn 14 is technically challenging—to do it well, you need to maintain top speed as long as possible in the short straight leading up to it, brake very hard and late, going deep into the corner while staying on the outside edge of the track, then smoothly turn and rotate the car around the corner, keeping her nice and settled, so she’s headed down the front straight and you can get right back onto the accelerator. Failure to do so, by degrees, can mean anything from losing a lot of momentum and having to wait until you can finally get the car pointed down the straight to get back on the throttle to having your teeth loosened on the rumble strips to over-shooting the rumble strips and having to wait to be towed out of the sand trap. But even the loss of momentum, having to stay off of the throttle longer than is ideal, translates into slow speed for the front straight. When you’re in a low-powered Miata, it’s hard to recover that speed. Slow entry onto a long straight will cost you 10 to 15 mph in top speed on the straight, and a second or two slower lap time.
The key to nailing a corner is to look farther through it, towards where you want to go, even if you can’t actually see it yet. Which is why I chose CMP turn 14 for my example. In this case, there’s a corner worker station that blocks your view of the front straight during your final approach to the corner. I remind my students and myself to already be turning our heads to the right and looking over our shoulders, down the front straight, well before we get to turn 14, and to keep doing it, even when the corner station blocks the view. First—you’ll be prepared to process the visual information the instant your route does come in to sight. Second, you won’t be focused on your immediate surroundings. These are the result of past decisions. Focusing on them can tempt you to react to them when your actions will be too late to be appropriate; and finally, of extreme importance, you won’t be staring at the rumble strips and the sand trap on the far side of the track, exactly where you don’t want to go but where your attention is drawn. In the physical world, we are drawn where we look. You may have experienced this in skiing, riding a bike or a horse, or driving a car or boat. Look at it and you’ll head towards it. No doubt you’ve had the experience of walking towards a person and, as you get close, moving to one side only to have the other person move to the same side. Why is that? Because you’re looking at each other!
We can’t envision the future right now—COVID-19 has placed an enormous corner station to block our metaphorical field of vision. But we still need to lift our eyes from the chaos around us and focus on that unknown future to navigate our lives in the best possible way. Only by consciously preparing for this yet to be revealed future can we be taking appropriate action now. Look towards it, build for it, prepare. COVID-19 too shall pass.
Envisioning your future
Are you wondering what looking farther ahead has to do with your life? Metaphorically speaking, looking further ahead in life, certainly during this pandemic, will positively impact our actions. Just imagine your own life and substitute “further” for “farther” in the following quote:
“Looking farther ahead allows you to act, rather than react. It is more of a planned action than a panicked reaction.”
Bondurant goes on to explain that a short-range focus leads to lots of quick steering adjustments. These can cause a bumpy, unsettling ride, either in a car or life. When your focus is well ahead, your inputs can be smooth, subtle and positive and they are more likely to take you where you want to go.
So enough of the racing analogies, already! I don’t have a specific hack or three step process to implement this one. Our lives are different and each of us has her own challenges, values, and aspirations. I can share how this works in my own life, though. Maybe an example will be useful as you find your own path. I’ve mentioned before how fortunate I am that my work was virtual prior to the pandemic. I haven’t had to alter my working habits or found myself without a job. My personal life was already in upheaval when COVID-19 arrived due to the loss of my father in February. Having devoted close to a decade to caring for my dad after my mom’s death, his passing brought an intensely challenging and rewarding stage of my life to a close. What will replace caring for Dad? Close, loving relationships with family and friends are important to me. Being of service to others gives my life meaning—where will I channel this energy?
You might think that COVID-19 was a crisis made to help me answer that question! In another time, I might have taken a long trip to rest, grieve Dad, and think about what my life should look like. Scratch that idea! Without a sabbatical option, I had to imagine how, during this crisis and the future I can envision, I can make a difference. Looking further forward, right? For me, that means donating plasma each month, continuing to pay my housecleaner and the guy who cuts my hair even though those services are on pause, donating canceled tickets or a little cash to the theatre and symphony when we can no longer attend, thanking the FedEx delivery person, mail carrier, and store clerks for the important and risky work they do. And, of course, paying attention to social distance and wearing a cloth mask in public—for the health of the community as a whole.
In imagining and looking towards our future, my hopes for a more peaceful, harmonious, supportive world guide my actions. What can I do to be better able to support and care for the people in my life, whether family, friends, clients, or the community, now and later? I’m learning about new tools that may be useful to my clients, practicing my listening skills so everyone in my life will feel supported, saying yes to interviews and requests for assistance that would be more comfortable to turn down because they are opportunities that may help others in tough times. I don’t know what our future will look like. Still, by looking further ahead, I can envision a time that will be a little better because I’m doing what I can today to help myself and others. And I’m preparing to make a contribution to the lives of those I touch in that future, however unclear it seems today. How about you?
Need some help preparing for the future you envision? Give me a call (336-701-2612) or send me a message.
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